Because it's 11 o'clock at night, and because I've just written three other blog posts for SmyWord and Verbatim, because I'm about to go on holiday, and because my contribution to preparing for the trip has so far has amounted to getting the windbreak out of the loft and deadheading the roses, and because only one of those tasks was strictly necessary, and because my wife is having to do everything else, and because she keeps enquiring as to the exact time I might complete my scribblings and come and give her a hand, I will make this a short post.
(I don't allow myself long sentences on the other two blogs. My, that felt good.)
Having enjoyed watching Salman Rushdie, I searched for other novelists on the Charlie Rose web site and came across a young, recently-published-to-critical-acclaim Zadie Smith back in 2000. She had this to say about writing White Teeth, her first novel:
[Writing] wasn’t something that I had a total passion for. I wanted to be a star … I wasn’t aware of it as a massive passion. I always did it and always thought I was fairly reasonable at it. When I went to college I started doing a lot more of it.I can’t explain it – I don’t get a huge amount of joy out of doing the thing because a lot of it is sitting around – there’s a lot of guilt involved because you’re not working and you should be working and you waste a lot of time – but when it does happen, on good days, when you do write 3,000 words and they’re as good as you’d want them to be, then it’s wonderful. I don’t think anything could beat it.
I agree.
I want to learn from successful novelists, in particular, because I am beginning to suspect that writing a novel is a discipline quite unlike any other form of writing.
Who inspires you?
Now I'd better go and pack some pants.
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